The Joseph Chalupa house is included on a tour of the historic "Pill Hill" section of South St. Paul this coming weekend, photographed on July 18, 2013. Chalupa was a Czech who founded the St. Paul Block Manufacturing Company on Concord Street, and the solidly built house is made of poured, reinforced concrete. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

An "S" decorates a downspout of the home which Harold Stassen owned when he was Governor of Minnesota, and is part of a tour of the historic "Pill Hill" section of South St. Paul this coming weekend, photographed on July 18, 2013. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

Carol Mladek usually gets the same reaction after telling longtime South St. Paul residents where in the city she lives.

“They mostly say, ‘Oh, you are in Pill Hill,’ ” she said, referring to the tiny Fifth Avenue neighborhood that overlooks the Mississippi River.

As the story goes, locals gave the two-block neighborhood its nickname because several of the residents who built homes there in the 1930s and ’40s were popular doctors.

“I’ve lived in my house for 25 years, but it’s always going to be known as Dr. Forsythe’s house,” said Mladek, noting Forsythe was a veterinarian.

On Sunday, the Pill Hill neighborhood will be featured during a walking tour meant to highlight its history and architecture, while also raising money for the South St. Paul Restorative Justice Council.

After a $20 donation, participants will be taken on a half-hour guided tour of the stretch of homes, three of which will be open to the public. St. Stefan’s Romanian Orthodox Church, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, also will be open during the tour. The tour will run every 15 minutes or so from 1 to 3 p.m.

Proceeds will be used to help fund “peace guides” at South St. Paul schools, said Mladek, council chair. The guides spend four hours a day at Kaposia Education Center and Lincoln Center Elementary, helping kids find peaceful solutions to problems.

Mladek said the idea to show off the neighborhood came up in January when she started holding meetings at her Spanish-style home, which features tiger-striped maple woodwork, handblown glass light fixtures and a hexagon-shaped front entryway.

“Jodelle Ista, our former chair, said, ‘This neighborhood is so beautiful and unique … we really ought to let more people see this,’ ” Mladek said.

The neighbors she spoke with were on board, she said, so she started researching the neighborhood. Mladek eventually turned to local historian and author Lois Glewwe, who grew up in South St. Paul and who agreed to write a history piece about the neighborhood for the walking tour.

Mladek said she was surprised to learn from Glewwe that a house two doors down from hers served as the “governor’s mansion” after homeowner Harold Stassen was elected governor of Minnesota in 1938.

Mladek asked Kris Schweinler, who now owns the former Stassen house, if she would make it available for the tour, and she agreed. The area already attracts people out for Sunday afternoon drives, Schweinler said, “and they are curious about the house.”

A neighbor told her after she bought the home that it had been owned by Stassen. An “S” on a gutter downspout is the only visible sign the former governor lived there, she said.

She said she bought the bungalow-style home because of its open design, high ceilings, “gorgeous woodwork” and big, north-facing windows.

“Apparently Mrs. Stassen was an artist and loved the natural light from the windows,” she said.

The “Pill Hill” designation is not unique to South St. Paul, according to Glewwe. It also identifies neighborhoods of elegant homes that once belonged to doctors in Rochester, Minn., and Chicago.

Although first platted in 1857, construction of the South St. Paul homes didn’t start until 1928, when Dr. Harold Tregilgas and the South St. Paul Improvement Company bought the 40-acre plat, Glewwe writes.

Besides doctors, South St. Paul’s “elegant new homes” were quickly bought up by the commission men, cattlemen, bankers and industrialists who brought their families there from the East Coast to be part of the budding community prospering from the massive St. Paul Union Stockyards, according to Glewwe.

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